Description
This species is 18 to 19 cm (7.1 to 7.5 in) long. Adults have black heads and iridescent blue-to-green back, upper breast, wings, and tail. The belly is red-orange, separated from the blue breast by a white bar. The undertail coverts and the wing linings are white. Juveniles have duller plumage with no more than a suggestion of the white breast band. Their irises are brown, later grayish white, eventually the adult's cream-color.
The Superb Starling has a long and loud song consisting of trills and chatters. At midday it gives a softer song of repeated phrases. There are several harsh calls, the most complex of which is described as "a shrill, screeching skerrrreeee-cherrrroo-tcherreeeeeet."
This species feeds primarily on the ground, often below, or in the vicinity of, acacia trees. It is gregarious and is generally rather tame and unafraid of people.
The appearance of the Superb Starling is very similar to Hildebrandt's Starling, also found in East Africa. The Superb Starling is distinguished by having white eyes, as opposed to the red eyes in the Hildebrandt's.
Read more about this topic: Superb Starling
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)